Four years ago on the day we celebrated the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., I wrote the article below on a personal blog. This morning while doing some research on Dr. King I ran across this article which I had almost forgotten I had written, read it and decided even though some of the data in it is a little dated with regard to current events, it is worthy of publishing again to pay honor to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Reprinted from January 19, 2009…
Today we celebrate the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the very influential, prominent leader and icon of the American Civil Rights movement.
One of the most important accomplishments of Dr King and the Civil Rights movement was the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which was signed into law on July 2, 1964, and prohibited discrimination in public places, provided for integration of schools and made employment discrimination illegal. It did not, however, make discrimination in housing illegal which Dr. King and the Civil Rights Movement continued to work toward.
Finally, on April 11, 1968 discrimination in housing became illegal when President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1968, also referred to as the “Fair Housing Act of 1968”. Unfortunately, Dr. King was assassinated one week prior to this and did not witness this historic event.
Last month I did a post titled “Fair Housing…How are we doing?” in which I discussed a report issued by the recently formed National Commission on Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity. The finding s of the commission were disappointing as their report stated “..discrimination continues to be endemic, intertwined into the very fabric of our lives. Ironically, even though more Americans than ever are living in diverse communities, residential segregation remains high.” The report went on to say there are at least 4 million fair housing violations in our country every year.
Clearly, our country still has work to do in this area….I doubt 4 million fair housing violations a year are what Dr. King dreamed about, or most of us for that matter. Perhaps this would be appropriate today to reflect on this problem and question whether we are doing all we can to protects everyones rights to housing and make sure housing is indeed “fair”?
Dr. Martin Luther King was a great man with a great dream of equality for all Americans…his dedication to this cause cost him his life but he left behind some great messages and lessons for the generations that followed. Below are some links to various resources that I thought were very interesting and informative and would invite you to check them out.
- Audio from a photographer that covered the civil rights movement for the Southern Courier in Alabama, Mississippi and Georgia during the 60’s.
- The text of the famous “letter from Birmingham jail” Dr. King wrote while there.
- A timeline of key events in Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s life
- Video of the famous “I have a dream speech” by Dr. King
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